THE NEW YORK TIMES: The elephant was alone and dehydrated when villagers first found her. It was September 2017, and the motherless mammal wandering near Boromo in Burkina Faso was only 2 or 3 months old.

“She was tiny,” said Céline Sissler-Bienvenu, who is currently the senior program officer for European disaster response and risk reduction for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. The elephant must have been discovered within a day or two of separating from her family, Ms. Sissler-Bienvenu guesses. “She wouldn’t have survived otherwise.”

Many orphaned elephants don’t make it. But with the help of people in and around Boromo, international conservationists and her best friend, a black-and-white sheep named Whisty, the scrappy elephant is now about 4 years old and thriving. Children at a nearby school named her Nania, or “will.”

Getting Nania from elephant infancy to elephant childhood has meant round-the-clock work for the people involved. And Nania’s rescuers now face a new challenge: figuring out whether she can be returned to life with a wild herd of elephants. Read more.